I love going to the gym and working out. I don’t feel like training is a chore, or a necessary bad in my life – working out has actually become one of the main highlights of my days. And no, it’s not because my days are so shitty that even working out feels like a relief (my days are actually pretty awesome) – I just genuinely love working out, I love challenging my body on an everyday basis, and I love the satisfaction I get after a tough session.

But you don’t even have to be a fitness-freak or a workout-maniac like me to find the motivation to overcome your laziness and push your physical limits every day. Many people think that by starting slow, finding a gym-buddy, or spending a shitload of money on gym-memberships and supplements will help boost their motivation – sometimes these techniques might work, but more often than not, these people are wrong. So, I’m here to share my top five tips to make sure you find the inner strength to achieve your fitness-goals consistently!

1. Set goals

Most beginners make the mistake of seeking physical activity rather than actual training. They have no goal, thus they achieve no goal. While physical activity can be fun and rewarding on its own, it probably won’t get you significant results – and the lack of results will eventually demotivate you. Sure, physical activity might make you healthier in the long-term, and it might even grant you some satisfaction afterwards, but since you’ll see very little reward for doing it, you won’t see any risk or downside of skipping a few sessions – or quitting altogether.

So, whatever training style you’re in to, you need to set goals for yourself, and you need to create a plan outlining your strategy to achieve that goal. Whether you want to change your bodyweight, or achieve a certain performance-level, having certain targets will keep you on track and motivated throughout your fitness-journey!

By constantly setting new goals for yourself, you’ll have a reason to work out, even on days when you’re not feeling it. Instead of wandering around cluelessly while fooling around with the weights, or doing something that feels right in the moment, you’ll actually give yourself a purpose and build a strong determination to achieve that purpose. Suddenly, whenever you want to skip a workout, you’ll risk hindering your progress by doing so. But you’ll also get one step closer to reaching your goals if you decide to push through and work out anyway!

2. Track your progress

This is closely related to setting goals for yourself. Having a goal to work towards is important – but it’s equally important that you have a sense of constant progress. If you feel like you’re going around in circles all the time, you’ll start to question the importance of working out in the first place.

Now, there are many ways you can track your progress, and the best method will be determined by the exact goal you set for yourself as well as your training-style.If you want to perform better in the gym, keep track of your weights, reps, and sets for each exercise you do.If you want to improve your performance on a running-session, keep track of your distance and time.If you want to change your body-composition, keep track of your bodyweight every week, and take a shirtless picture of yourself about once a month.

By tracking your progress, you’ll know exactly how close you are to reaching your goals. This will keep you motivated for sure, but it will also help you set targets for your individual training-sessions.

3. Change your training

Despite absolutely loving my workouts, I know how monotone the same workout or the same training style can be after a while. For this reason, I change my workouts every 4-6 weeks. Now, this change isn’t always that drastic – I might just change a few little things. Still, monotone workouts will eventually become boring, thus draining all of your initial enthusiasm. Don’t be afraid to mix things up every once in a while!

Now, there are many ways to make things a little more exciting, but here are my top strategies that I regularly use:

Change your rep-ranges, number of sets, or rest-times between your sets

As soon as you feel that you’re getting bored in the gym, try getting a little creative to make things interesting again! Whether you start a completely new training-routine, or you just mix things up a bit is totally up to you. With that being said, make sure that you don’t switch things up too often, because that will make working towards your goals extremely difficult!

4. Acquire knowledge

To set realistic goals, make effective plans to reach those goals, and to change your training-routine without compromising efficiency, you have to know what you’re doing, and why you’re doing it. But more importantly (at least from a motivational perspective), if you understand why you’re doing a certain thing – rather than just blindly doing it – you’ll know that you’re doing something meaningful, further strengthening your sense of purpose.

As you dive into the world of fitness, training, and nutrition, you’ll give yourself a chance to develop a passion for it – something that can’t happen if you barely know anything about this world. You’ll find interesting scientific articles, motivating personal stories, inspiring role-models, and helpful communities to help you on your journey of building the body of your dreams! Let the world of health & fitness absorb you, and you might just become as passionate about your workouts as I am…

5. Take a pre-workout

While there are many amazing supplements that can improve your health, performance, and even body-composition, no other supplement will have a greater impact on your motivation-levels than a good pre-workout.

A pre-workout will give you energy to hit the gym; it will help you focus and stay present throughout your workout; it will increase your pump and your performance, making your workouts more effective and enjoyable. But most importantly: a good pre-workout will cause a slight, temporary aggression to burn inside of you – almost forcing you to attack the weights, and attack them hard. You’ll become more motivated to actually go to the gym, and – by slightly improving the effectiveness of your workouts – your results will also come a little faster.

Taking a pre-workout is a natural part of my pre-gym ritual – and whether you’re struggling to get your ass to the gym consistently, or if you just want an extra boost in your workouts, you should definitely consider adding it to your supplement-regimen!

Getting started is the most difficult part – but once you get past the first few months, you might find yourself falling in love with the process! How do you keep yourself motivated to work out consistently? Share your top tips in the comments! Also, if you enjoyed this post, make sure to follow Vikingfinity! I create posts just like this every Tuesday and every Friday, and you don’t want to miss them!